Fast precipitation of calcium phosphate layers on titanium induced by simple chemical treatments.

A simple two-step chemical treatment, i.e. etching with HCl and H2SO4 followed by immersion in boiling dilute NaOH solution, has been developed by our group to prepare bioactive microporous titanium surfaces allowing fast deposition of a calcium phosphate layer (CPL) from an in vitro supersaturated calcification solution (SCS). In this work, a precalcification (Pre-Ca) procedure was applied by soaking the two-step treated titanium in Na2HPO4 and then saturated Ca(OH)2 solution before immersion in SCS to accelerate further the CPL precipitation. The treated titanium surfaces with Pre-Ca were characterized after 1, 2, 4, 8 and 16 h of immersion in SCS by means of scanning electron microscopy together with energy dispersive X-ray analysis, X-ray diffraction and infrared absorption analysis. It was observed that the CPL precipitation rate with Pre-Ca averaged 1 microm h-1, twice as fast as without Pre-Ca. No precipitation was observed on untreated titanium with Pre-Ca up to day 14 of immersion in the SCS.